Andante and Variations, Op. 46

Robert Schumann (1810-56) was a man who wore many hats and who projected multiple musical personalities; that he also suffered catastrophic mental illness may not be unrelated to that complexity. Schumann began in the footsteps of his bookish father, but he quickly threw off a career in law for music, philosophy, and socializing. Schumann might have remained a carefree Romeo without the influence of his Juliet, i.e., Clara Wieck. Despite her father’s wishes and a long legal battle, they eloped and were married in 1840. Schumann’s response was immediate, and it came as an enormous outpouring of song in his Liederjahr or Song-Year. Soon after, Schumann turned his attention to chamber music, a genre he had yet not cultivated in any way. In 1842 he wrote three string quartets, as well as the beloved Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet, both in E-flat major. The Andante and Variations on tonight’s program was completed in January 1843. According to the composer, “It has something of the spirit of an Elegy. I think I was rather melancholy when I wrote it.” In light of Schumann’s subsequent mental breakdown, that reference to melancholy seems like a tragic understatement.
The pianos carry much of the burden in this piece. Schumann sensed as much, apparently, and chose to rescore the work into a two-piano version, published in 1844. The original version languished for another fifty years before appearing in print. The cello and horn generally play a coloristic and supporting role, though they each get their turn in the spotlight during the middle variations. One wonders if the specific instrumentation—found nowhere else in the works of a major composer—was inspired by the people within Schumann’s immediate orbit at the beginning of 1843. The Andante’s main theme is pure Schumann, with its ingratiating and defining F-FG-G melodic figure. The following variations proceed from the rapturous to the martial; there is even a near quotation of the funeral march from Chopin’s B-flat minor piano sonata. Heard in its original scoring, the piece sounds full and rapturous, and it includes an introduction and central variation deleted from the two-piano edition.

(c) Jason Stell